On Wednesday morning, unionized employees of Kaiser Permanente, one of the nation's largest not-for-profit health providers, have begun to walk off the job.
By 9 am ET, more than 75,000 Kaiser workers plan to join picket lines, marking the largest health care strike in US history.
The striking employees are represented by a coalition of eight unions that comprise 40% of Kaiser Permanente's total staff. The unions ordered members off the job at 6 am local time, and Kaiser workers in Virginia and Washington, DC, started to walk out early Wednesday.
The vast majority of the striking workers are in the western part of the United States, including California, Colorado, Washington and Oregon.
The unprecedented strike comes at a time of heightened labor activity across the United States, with tens of thousands of workers across multiple industries taking to the picket lines for better pay and benefits. In the wake of pandemic, however, health care workers in particular have been fighting for safer and more secure work environments.
Who is on strike?
Many health care employees are set to join the picket lines, including nursing staff, dietary workers, receptionists, optometrists, and pharmacists. The strike effort comes after the workers' employment contracts expired at 11:59pm PT on September 30. Negotiations between the union and Kaiser Permanente continued into Wednesday, but the two sides could not agree on a deal by the coalition's strike deadline.
The strike is temporary. Kaiser Permanente workers will return to work on October 7 at 6 am local time in each state that joins the strike. However, a "longer, stronger" strike may come in November if a deal between the coalition and Kaiser Permanente is not reached after this strike effort, according to communications from SEIU-UHW, the largest union in the coalition.
Striking employees say staff shortages have left them feeling overworked and burnt out. In a recent statement, Kaiser Permanente said it has agreed to accelerate hiring, setting a goal of hiring 10,000 new people for union-represented jobs by the end of 2023.
The union coalition is demanding higher pay, a strategy by Kaiser Permanente management to tackle chronic staff shortages, protections against outsourcing, and earlier notice when management calls remote workers back to in-person work.
According to an update by SEIU-UHW, negotiating progress was made before the strike began, though management and the unions are still far apart regarding employee raises.
Kaiser Permanente has offered location-dependent wage increases, with a maximum of 4% for each of the four years of the new contract, according to an October 1 update by SEIU-UHW. The coalition rejected that offer, saying such a raise proposal fails to keep up with the cost of living.
The coalition is asking for an across-the-board 6.5% raise in the first two years of the labor contract and a 5.75% raise in the next two years.
"Workers are really being squeezed right now," Renee Saldana, a spokesperson for SEIU-UHW, told CNN. "They went through the worst global health crisis in a generation and then they come out and they're worried about paying rent, they're worried about losing their house, they're worried about living in their cars."
In a statement, Kaiser Permanente said it is a leader in pay.
"We lead total compensation in every market where we operate, and our proposals in bargaining would ensure we keep that position," a spokesperson for Kaiser Permanente said in a statement.
Kaiser Permanente management and union representatives agreed on some of the union's demands. For example, Kaiser Permanente agreed to renew outsourcing and subcontracting protections for many workers and decided on 60-day notice before remote staff are required to return to in-person work, according to SEIU-UHW.